nero_design
New member
My television has been bursting with static every evening after a certain hour and it didn't take me long to realize someone was broadcasting nearby on a CB radio. This sort of interference is something which is not supposed to occur but I was curious enough to turn on my 2-Way radios that I would normally use to keep in touch with my detecting partners when we split up. Sure enough, there was a wild conversation taking place over the radio waves but it was the nature of the conversation which amused me. It was naive and it was full of enthusiasm. Now I decided to wait until after the Easter Weekend to post this since the conversation was observed just prior to the break. It was the open channels so there's no privacy I'm infringing upon.
My wife and I sat back and listened with our mouths hanging open.
Apart from the usual flurry of profanity (some of the more colorful metaphors were quite impressively structured), there was a good half dozen people discussing how they were going to 'look for gold' during the Easter long weekend. Normally, this would not be of much interest but it was their misguided opinions which had us howling on the floor with laughter. Here's a sample of the conversation and it's actually quite an accurate extract since I wrote it all down immediately after they'd signed off:
__________________________________________________________
6 Different Voices:
"So we gonna go do this or what?"
"What's that? We going %$#@*&! lookin' for gold or what?"
"Yeah. I saw this thing on the television the other night. There's @$#@*&! tons of it all over the place. You just gotta find it."
"Where does gold come from?"
"Gold comes from meteorites. 500 million years ago, meteorites came and fell on the earth and that's where the gold come from. It doesn't occur on earth. "
"Space Gold!"
"That's the stuff! It's everywhere. We just gotta get a detector."
"Yeah. It didn't burn up or it would have just been dust when it hit th earth"
"I'll tell you what to get and you get it on ebay, right?"
"Yeah. What's the one we need to get?"
"Where's the gold then?"
"It's in the ground. The ground has changed over millions of years. 150 millions years ago it looked different to what it does today."
"I got here you have to get a permit. You can't dig it out without a license. You can hunt for sapphires on Crown Land but you're stuffed if they catch you looking for nuggets without a license."
"Stuff you's all. Just find it and put it in your pocket and keep walking."
"Plenty of gold to be found. They said so on television. It's everywhere waiting to get picked up."
"That'd be nice. Find a nice fat $#@*&! nugget!"
"Go to Papua New Guinea. Bribe the natives and bring it all home. They might not want to eat you since there's no meat on ya bones."
"They'll pass. There ain't no meat on him."
"Doesn't Uranium 456 come from gold?"
"Yep. it's f$#@*&! radioactive as $#@*&! though."
"I thought Uranium was ore?"
"No it comes from Gold. They extract it with a centrifuge. It's not radioactive unless it gets activated. You have to activate it first."
"Oh f$#@*&! We have to get a Giger counter as well as a metal detector."
"That's it."
"The centrifuge makes the atoms go round the other way and it becomes radioactive."
"Isn't that dangerous? Is the gold radioactive?"
"Goodnight boys, I'm off to bed."
(person leaves)
"So what detector do we get?"
"Are you on eBay?"
"Yep"
"Get a Garrett's Infinu-um (Infinium) "
"A what?"
"A Garrett. Get a Garrett. They're Two Grand. That's the one to get."
"Can it tell you what's under the ground? You know: Before you dig it."
(static and abuse)
"Yeah. Get a Garrett. It will show you what's there."
"What about one of them detectors which work from 40 feet away?"
"That's a German detector. Those are good too."
"Saves you digging everything."
"I bought a license last week. I bought a Miner's Right for $40 at the pub.
Cost me $40 and it came with a fee pan."
(static and garbled transmission)
"You're crushing the signal. Wait your turn. What was that about a Miner's Right?"
"I got a Miner's Right for $40. It came with a free pan."
"Do you know where to go for gold if you want to pan for it?"
"Use Google. That's got all the maps you need for gold panning."
"Get up to Turon. That's where it is."
"How do you spell Turon?"
"Turon is a river."
"C-H-E-W-O-N, is that how you spell it?"
"Nah. That place is all done. You need to go to Parkes and Young."
"How about Cootamundra?"
"If you're going that far, you might as well go all the way to Serbia."
"Get a Garrett. You have to tell it what to do though."
"Tell it what to do?"
"Yeah. You sick a bit of gold on the ground and you program it to look for gold.
When it learns what you want to find, that's what it will do. But you have to tune it so it learns. Teach it what you want."
"Sounds easy."
"They said on the 6:30 program that anyone can find gold."
"Are we bringing the kids and the women?"
(woman chimes in) "Yes you are."
"There goes that."
"What about Hargraves?"
"Garrett makes all them metal detectors and security stuff."
"I reckon a nice big nugget would make me happy. You wanna go halves with me?"
"This is gonna be easy."
"You have to look for quartz. Gold is always found in quartz."
"We should bring the .303's and go hunting. Bang! Bang! Bang!"
"Or we could bring the fishing rods. Fish! Fish! Fish!"
"Get the satellite maps. Use those. That's how it is."
"You got Google? Google has the maps."
"I like the idea of getting rich with gold"
"Easy, mate. Anyone can do it if you have a good detector."
"What's it cost to rent 'em. Aye?"
"Twenty buck a day"
"Awesome, mate"
"Look in the rivers on the old maps from the 1800s"
"Google the creeks and check it out in Victoria"
"Lots of gold down that way. I'm gonna get it too."
_______________________________________________________________
There were a few names and nicknames mentioned which were left out of the extract.
But it shows how many people were affected by the recent television article of Gold Hunting on the 6:30 program (Today Tonight?) last week on Australian Television.
There was a lot of ignorance in the discussion but one of them seemed to know roughly what to do. What's worth knowing though is that I know one of the persons in the conversation is quite a thug in the literal sense of the word and you REALLY wouldn't want to meet him in a dark forest at night. Their decision to run with a Garrett rather than a Minelab in the hot soils here might be due to their fathers using early Garrett machines (not included in the above extract).
So that's what we Aussie Prospectors are up against. But as a friend recently said to me: "God loves Idiots because they all seem to find good gold."
_________________________________________________________________
Follow up:
I was on the ground in some of the areas mentioned in the broadcast the other day (during the Easter weekend) with my X-Terra 70 but saw no-one else there. If they managed to obtain a metal detector whilst the shops were shut over Easter, they would have been pretty slick. I'm guessing they didn't. Either way, I saw no-one else out there.
My wife and I sat back and listened with our mouths hanging open.
Apart from the usual flurry of profanity (some of the more colorful metaphors were quite impressively structured), there was a good half dozen people discussing how they were going to 'look for gold' during the Easter long weekend. Normally, this would not be of much interest but it was their misguided opinions which had us howling on the floor with laughter. Here's a sample of the conversation and it's actually quite an accurate extract since I wrote it all down immediately after they'd signed off:
__________________________________________________________
6 Different Voices:
"So we gonna go do this or what?"
"What's that? We going %$#@*&! lookin' for gold or what?"
"Yeah. I saw this thing on the television the other night. There's @$#@*&! tons of it all over the place. You just gotta find it."
"Where does gold come from?"
"Gold comes from meteorites. 500 million years ago, meteorites came and fell on the earth and that's where the gold come from. It doesn't occur on earth. "
"Space Gold!"
"That's the stuff! It's everywhere. We just gotta get a detector."
"Yeah. It didn't burn up or it would have just been dust when it hit th earth"
"I'll tell you what to get and you get it on ebay, right?"
"Yeah. What's the one we need to get?"
"Where's the gold then?"
"It's in the ground. The ground has changed over millions of years. 150 millions years ago it looked different to what it does today."
"I got here you have to get a permit. You can't dig it out without a license. You can hunt for sapphires on Crown Land but you're stuffed if they catch you looking for nuggets without a license."
"Stuff you's all. Just find it and put it in your pocket and keep walking."
"Plenty of gold to be found. They said so on television. It's everywhere waiting to get picked up."
"That'd be nice. Find a nice fat $#@*&! nugget!"
"Go to Papua New Guinea. Bribe the natives and bring it all home. They might not want to eat you since there's no meat on ya bones."
"They'll pass. There ain't no meat on him."
"Doesn't Uranium 456 come from gold?"
"Yep. it's f$#@*&! radioactive as $#@*&! though."
"I thought Uranium was ore?"
"No it comes from Gold. They extract it with a centrifuge. It's not radioactive unless it gets activated. You have to activate it first."
"Oh f$#@*&! We have to get a Giger counter as well as a metal detector."
"That's it."
"The centrifuge makes the atoms go round the other way and it becomes radioactive."
"Isn't that dangerous? Is the gold radioactive?"
"Goodnight boys, I'm off to bed."
(person leaves)
"So what detector do we get?"
"Are you on eBay?"
"Yep"
"Get a Garrett's Infinu-um (Infinium) "
"A what?"
"A Garrett. Get a Garrett. They're Two Grand. That's the one to get."
"Can it tell you what's under the ground? You know: Before you dig it."
(static and abuse)
"Yeah. Get a Garrett. It will show you what's there."
"What about one of them detectors which work from 40 feet away?"
"That's a German detector. Those are good too."
"Saves you digging everything."
"I bought a license last week. I bought a Miner's Right for $40 at the pub.
Cost me $40 and it came with a fee pan."
(static and garbled transmission)
"You're crushing the signal. Wait your turn. What was that about a Miner's Right?"
"I got a Miner's Right for $40. It came with a free pan."
"Do you know where to go for gold if you want to pan for it?"
"Use Google. That's got all the maps you need for gold panning."
"Get up to Turon. That's where it is."
"How do you spell Turon?"
"Turon is a river."
"C-H-E-W-O-N, is that how you spell it?"
"Nah. That place is all done. You need to go to Parkes and Young."
"How about Cootamundra?"
"If you're going that far, you might as well go all the way to Serbia."
"Get a Garrett. You have to tell it what to do though."
"Tell it what to do?"
"Yeah. You sick a bit of gold on the ground and you program it to look for gold.
When it learns what you want to find, that's what it will do. But you have to tune it so it learns. Teach it what you want."
"Sounds easy."
"They said on the 6:30 program that anyone can find gold."
"Are we bringing the kids and the women?"
(woman chimes in) "Yes you are."
"There goes that."
"What about Hargraves?"
"Garrett makes all them metal detectors and security stuff."
"I reckon a nice big nugget would make me happy. You wanna go halves with me?"
"This is gonna be easy."
"You have to look for quartz. Gold is always found in quartz."
"We should bring the .303's and go hunting. Bang! Bang! Bang!"
"Or we could bring the fishing rods. Fish! Fish! Fish!"
"Get the satellite maps. Use those. That's how it is."
"You got Google? Google has the maps."
"I like the idea of getting rich with gold"
"Easy, mate. Anyone can do it if you have a good detector."
"What's it cost to rent 'em. Aye?"
"Twenty buck a day"
"Awesome, mate"
"Look in the rivers on the old maps from the 1800s"
"Google the creeks and check it out in Victoria"
"Lots of gold down that way. I'm gonna get it too."
_______________________________________________________________
There were a few names and nicknames mentioned which were left out of the extract.
But it shows how many people were affected by the recent television article of Gold Hunting on the 6:30 program (Today Tonight?) last week on Australian Television.
There was a lot of ignorance in the discussion but one of them seemed to know roughly what to do. What's worth knowing though is that I know one of the persons in the conversation is quite a thug in the literal sense of the word and you REALLY wouldn't want to meet him in a dark forest at night. Their decision to run with a Garrett rather than a Minelab in the hot soils here might be due to their fathers using early Garrett machines (not included in the above extract).
So that's what we Aussie Prospectors are up against. But as a friend recently said to me: "God loves Idiots because they all seem to find good gold."
_________________________________________________________________
Follow up:
I was on the ground in some of the areas mentioned in the broadcast the other day (during the Easter weekend) with my X-Terra 70 but saw no-one else there. If they managed to obtain a metal detector whilst the shops were shut over Easter, they would have been pretty slick. I'm guessing they didn't. Either way, I saw no-one else out there.
. Sounds like they got "The Gold Fever", yep, Yeller Gold. Kinda sounds like Quartzsite Arizona this year. It's a place that the snowbirds (retired people in motorhomes) go each year and camp on BLM land. This year they looked like ants out there. Motor homes and beepers everywhere. Some of them really do know what they are doing, but many just run around the desert with their beeper boxes, dig holes everywhere and find nothing. I went out there once this year, it was crazy. I started talking to this old guy at one of the gas stations who invited me out to his claim. He was so frustrated with the thousands of idiots there. I did find my first piece of gold with the 70 on his claim. I'll be driving by there this weekend on the way home from visiting my kids. I'm just going to stop at this one wash that always gives me some fine chunky gold, fill about 10 buckets up with dirt and beat feet home. I'll run the dirt through the highbanker later.